Rey's Words
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Rey's relationship with written words and stories, growing up on Jakku.
**Alternate Postings:** Originally posted on AO3 and LiveJournal March 19, 2016
 **Rating/Content:** PG13, canon neglected child backstory, maudlin, literacy  
 **Disclaimer:** Not my world. Not even my usual world.

 **Summary:** Rey's relationship with written words and stories, growing up on Jakku.

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 **Rey's Words**

-.-

From the moment she was first sent into the wrecks to scavenge, Rey has stolen and kept every spare sheet of flimsy she's found in them. Flimsies aren't worth anything, but when she was little, she'd take any chance she got to look at the letters on them, to try to puzzle out the words. She'd had only a little bit of education before being left on Jakku, but she wanted to know. Wanted to remember.

None of the flimsies were stories; they were all ship manifests, flight logs, reports. She worked through the letters and sounded out the complex words, and asked anyone who'd hear her what the words meant. Sometimes someone answered her instead of taking a swat at the annoying human child. It was enough. Rey learned.

She wrote on the blank parts of flimsies too, forming the letters of the words she'd read above, combining the letters to make words she knew. No one would tell her if she was doing it right, and she knew it was pointless to ask. If she had time to write and read, she had time where she could be crawling deep into the nooks and crannies of the crashed ships, getting the harder-to-reach parts and earning her keep with Unkar Plutt. No one told her what to write, no one taught her new words and how to use them.

The first word she wrote that wasn't a copy of a word from the flimsies was 'home'. She spelled it wrong of course, but didn't know because she'd never seen it before.

Rey scratched words on the flimsies with char-sticks, on the walls of the ships with sharp metal, in places deep deep in the access shafts where no one would ever see: 'rey' 'i am rey' 'i am here' 'i am still here'.

She always told herself stories of the ships that had crashed on Jakku. She knew which were from the Empire and which were from the Rebellion or Republic because while she may not have been taught to read and write on Jakku by anyone but herself, she was taught the names of the ships and the parts inside them. What they did, how they made the ship go, fight, defend. What they were worth.

Knowing how to be still and quiet, she listened to everyone who gleaned the ships. She heard their stories about the battle fought above Jakku, when the ships fell from the sky. She told and retold their stories to herself, embellishing them, picking up the names of great heroes; Luke, Leia, Han. She made herself a Rebel pilot doll, she found a helmet, and she told herself stories of heroes and legends.

When she told herself a story she didn't want to ever forget, one that took her away (from Jakku, the scrub tent, Unkar's trade shack) for the span of time it lasted, she wrote it down. Letter by letter, word by word, scratching slowly onto flimsies in the dark. No one read them but her. No one saw them but her. She kept them hidden away, safe.

As she grew and learned more, she'd correct her spelling and grammar on her older stories, making them better. Re-reading them again, remembering them anew:

There was the story about the princess, whose whole planet was destroyed in front of her, but even then didn't give up; the princess who kept fighting back with her friends, even when she knew she was alone.

There was the story of the boy who only knew his father was dead, who lost the only family he knew, and was taken away to another planet to learn to use the secret inner strength he never knew he had, and used it to change the fate of the galaxy.

There was the story of the man who was a scavenger and a smuggler, who only cared about himself until he found something more important that he needed to care about.

There was the story of the brother and sister who never knew each other existed, but who found each other again anyway.

There was the story of the heroes who found each other when they were lost, who gathered around them friends and allies, and despite loss and tragedy and despair, ended the evil Emperor's reign.

Stories she'd heard, stories she'd made up. Stories. Legends. Nothing real. Just something that could take her away from Jakku for a while.

Something to make Rey believe anything could still be possible.

-.-.-

(that's it)


End file.
